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Misfire? I'm stranded in Kent!

Hello everyone. I'm currently about 2000 miles into a little vacation with my 87 carbed wagon.

I'm a little stumped, so I thought I might come to the people with a little wider knowledge base than mine. I'm in Kent, about 350 miles from my toolbox. :-\

After a camping trip, fully loaded up as high up as I could get on Mt. Rainier, I was having trouble. It was stumbling and lurching when I tried to maintain a constant speed, but would act fine while accelerating/decelerating. It didn't act weird until I got gas about 30 miles from the base of the mountain. It would idle decently at 700

I changed the fuel filter, put a bottle of carb cleaner in the next tank of gas and sprayed down the carb. It didn't seem to help much, so I popped the vacuum line off the vacuum advance and it stopped missing, and would run fine at any RPM. when I pulled the throttle cable with my finger over the vac line, it pulled more as the RPMs increased, and I didn't find any vac leaks.

I've been driving around Kent/Covington without it hooked up. I noticed it had slightly less power(not like it has it anyway), and I lost a couple MPGs on the highway, but it was running fine, with no pings or misses.

Now my current issue, after a couple hundred miles with no advance, it's starting to act up , missing randomly at a broad range of RPMs, regardless of throttle input. Is it possible that the advance is just clogged, and whatever was holding it up came loose while driving around? Or do they just have a tendency to bite the dust after 213K miles? I haven't had any problems with it during the previous 8k I put on the car since I got it.

I'll try to clean it out in the morning and hook it back up to see what I get. A couple days ago I put the hose back on and it ran terribly again, but was fine instantly without it.

Also, before leaving timing was set at 8 degrees BTDC at 700rpm, and it was fine for about 1500 miles.

* could it be pickup wires under the cap? How'd I go about testing those without putting a new disty on the motor?

I think Turbone is on track. You may want to replace the disty and see if that helps. It sounds like the vacuum advance diaphram has a problem and the bushings inside it may be bad also and that is causing the missing. There may be some salvage yards down near the Kent area to get a replacement but I'm not sure.

I`m guessing the vaccuum diaphragm is good.
Easy enough to test w/a spare piece of vaccuum line and lung power.
Make sure it holds vaccuum and the pick-up coil plate under the disty cap moves smoothly.
I`m thinking rotation of the plate disturbs the pick-up coil wires or perhaps the plate mounting (bushing?) is worn and the plate moves to a funky position w/vac. advance.Have a look.

2nd possibility comes to mind.
If it runs better w/the vac. advance line unhooked but not plugged,an over rich mixture is suspect.Flooding carb maybe? Worth looking at the fuel level in the sight glass if possible.
I would expect a poor/no idle in this case however.

If you pop the distributor cap off and wiggle the rotor around, the rotor should stay centered. You can twist it against the springs of the mechanical advance, but shouldn't be able to wiggle the whole shaft it sits on around. If the bushings are shot, the air gap between the toothed wheel and the pickup coil can get too large, leading to missfires. The pickup coil is moved when the vacuum advance shifts the plate it sits on.

Since the rotor was broken it kind of sounds like the wrong part was used or it wasn't screwed down in place correctly. There were 2 different sizes used I believe. You also have the classic signs of bad bushings since you stated the tach is jumping. Did you check the disty cap for any damage to it inside it? A replacement disty should get you running smooth down the road again.

Does it have the 1.6 or 1.8? Is it OHV or OHC? M/T or a/t. I work at a wrecking yard and am linked by computer to other wrecking yards nation wide, I can certainly look it up and get you a phone number to places that have one if you want me to.

Okay I'm not as familiar with the western half of Washington as I am the eastern, but I found 2 places that have one, the first is I-5 Truck and Auto, they are in Chehalis they've got one for 30 bucks, their number is 800-551-4489, the down side to them is they won't ship, so you'd have to drive there to get it.

The second place is called Campbell Nelson, they've got one for $100 (yikes quite a difference in price) and they are in Arlington their number is 888-337-7757.

I've got one here for 45.00 but I don't think you want to drive clear to Okanogan Washington to get it. If all else fails, I can ship it to you.

It's ran fine after the 30th.No more tach jumps. I made my way to Oak Harbor, and it was just fine, minus the bent wheel in the back.

I got what sounded like lifter tick on a hot morning. It went away after like 10 minutes. I pulled over and stopped the car and checked the oil, it was all there and the appropriate consistency. About 2 minutes after that it stopped ticking.

Could that be a dying oil pump? It's never done that and it hasn't done it again after about 50 more miles.